‘Eclogue for GTA V’ by AMJ Seville

These nighttimes come and San Andreas is a radial glow that gunshots crack like easy plate glass.

Baby, I think I should take myself more seriously.

I think these kind of thoughts when I’m up here:

that I don’t want to end up like my father,

that that’s the deal with the drug trade, isn’t it, it attracts the wrong kind of character?

I didn’t dream I’d spend my Saturdays snorting

Methoxetamine with my sister-in-law.

I didn’t dream I would be thumbing my way up Grapeseed Main

with a plastic suitcase.

But it’s true you’ve followed me through all the motels, blind as a

mouse, blind as my black aviators.

At night I sip an ice cold Sprunk

and I close my eyes and remember:

the Jelly Palms

the Fishtail Palms

the parking lots

how far away they are

I see the Hawaiian patterns of your pants, the

bubblegum sizzle of your heart.

Our true romance is baked

into the hillside with a

fast car and a chance

I bet every bit of us could be

respawned.

Stacey:

My father used to line up Pißwassers on the wall of an empty lot like they were Easter eggs and shoot them off

when I left school I shouted have a nice life you pathetic psychopath!

I went to the city to make real money.

Lately I’ve given up bending the ears

of my customers

explaining

the difference

between a

call girl

and a prostitute:

it hardly seems worth my time.

But they all admit my breasts look excellent on billboards

real shaded

my lollipop goes on forever.

Lately I’ve wanted to meet some real gamers (except most of them are pricks):

when I speak to them I’m nervous, pulling awkwardly at my

hotpants, watching the turquoise tank in reception, its

swirls of glowlight tetra fish.

It’s nice to get out of town. I could wrap my voluptuous mouth

around this mountain,

suck the fir trees out…

I could lay my tongue against

Brick Kid’s

big bad

baseball jacket

back.

I don’t think anyone really understands my motivations.

But the thing that gets me about Brick Kid is not just that he thinks he’s it

but just how swiftly his promises fizzle: he thinks

he’s in love with freedom

but actually

he operates better

within constraints:

an LSPD scanner taped to his dash.

AMJ Seville is from Birmingham. She studied English at Glasgow, and in 2016 completed a Poetry & Criticism MA at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Belfast, studying with the Fulbright scholar James Arthur. She has previously been published in The Lifeboat’s pamphlet series (2016), run by Stephen Connolly and Manuela Moser. She now works as a waitress and librarian. She enjoys watching cartoons and expensive fish.